


Made Creatures

by maypop



Category: Nikita (TV 2010)
Genre: F/F, Gen, mention of past drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-01
Updated: 2012-12-01
Packaged: 2017-11-20 00:38:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/579376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maypop/pseuds/maypop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The lead up to the first mission.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Made Creatures

The crook of Alex's elbow didn't itch anymore, but she still rubbed it when she thought, the same way pens ended up between two fingers of her left hand, and she scrunched up in the tiniest possible space in the large bed. Being an addict was more than just a chemical dependency--there had been a whole lifestyle, a dialect, a series of little habits and tics that lived on in the way she moved and thought, even cut off from her highs. Alex rattled and slept and sneered like a junkie, but she was starting to get tired of it. Of herself, frankly.

She paced the floor, rubbing her arms, watching her captor/rescuer/tormentor getting dressed. Nikita had been careful not to get undressed in front of her for the first month or so, but it hadn't stuck. Now she was dithering between two functionally identical sheath dresses and the obligatory--

"You have a leggings problem," Alex said. "I should lock you in that sweat box until you promise to buy a pair of jeans."

Nikita didn't laugh. She was tugging on the seams of one of the dresses, looking distant and distracted. "Jeans constrict your movements and the pockets are much too small. A dress can hide a thigh holster, and people don't generally notice your leggings have kevlar woven into them. Green or grey?"

"Red." Alex flopped down onto her bed and gnawed the raw edge of her cuticle. "Kevlar? Where are you going?"

"Not enough to stop a bullet or even a really determined knife, but if you end up sliding down a hill--out," Nikita said. "Meeting a contact. Red is eye-catching."

"Uh," Alex said. "Yeah, because usually no one notices you in a crowd."

"What about the black?"

"Everyone wears black," Alex said. She looked at the tiny glittery purse, the thick chunky heels. "Are you meeting at a club?"

"Yes."

"Take me."

"No."

"Nikita--" Alex wished for the millionth time her rescuer had a nice American name like Madison or Danielle, she was American now, she could sing the Fresh Prince of Bel Air song backwards and forwards, it was only these soaring ceilings and white sheets that made her tongue trip over ancient diminutives. "I'm going crazy in here. Crazier. You know I make bad decisions when I'm bored."

"I'll take you to Starbucks," Nikita said. "And the library. Tomorrow." She picked the red dress off the hanger and turned it inside out.

Alex opened her mouth to argue when the computer crackled to life. Incoming call. Nikita shot her a sharp glance and put her finger to her lips. Alex rolled her eyes and flapped one hand at her, yeah, yeah, whatever, I know.

"Answer," Nikita said, and then in a different accent: "Hello? This is Olivia?"

"Ollie dear--" It was a woman on the phone, low and amused. "I'm running late. I'll be there at nine, I'm afraid that's the soonest I can get away from my desk."

Nikita sighed. "The hazards of being indispensable," she said, sounding like the Queen while she fitted her Bowie knife's sheath to the inside of her dress, and Alex didn't--quite--stifle her giggle quickly enough.

Nikita shot her a sharp look, but it was too late.

"--Ollie," the voice said. "Ollie, Ollie, who is listening to our phone calls? Have you gotten a new partner? I did not like the other one."

"I'm well shut of the other one, as you know," Nikita said. "That was my... cousin."

"You're teaching the business to your family? That is so darling. You must bring her. I insist."

Nikita made an abortive gesture like she was about to throw the dress across the room, stopped herself. "She's quite young."

"We all start out that way, Grandmother Ollie. I'll have them set a table for three."

Disconnected, the screen flashed.

"Oops?" Alex said, after a moment.

Nikita stared at her, lips tight. "Andrea Perotto makes most of her money selling organs on the black market. I hope you're happy with yourself."

"I'll be careful, Jesus."

"You've never been before," Nikita said. "I spent way too much time on you to watch you die on a table, Alex. No. It's too dangerous. I'm going to cancel."

"She knows your phone number," Alex pointed out. "This number, the safehouse number."

"She's a butcher, not a hacker--"

"Hackers can be bought--"

"Why are you so desperate to endanger your life?"

Alex threw her hands up. "What life?" she said. "I only know how to be one thing, Nikita, and I can't be that anymore! What am I supposed to do now? Be a librarian?"

"You don't want to be me," Nikita said. "Never safe, trusting no one, constantly on guard, constantly lying--"

"Wow, yeah, no idea what that's like." Nikita flinched. Alex pounced. "I'm a person, not just a whip for you to beat yourself with. Let me do something."

Nikita left the dress on the bed and stormed off to the shower. She stayed in there so long that Alex, for all her jittery energy, had started to nod off--another street habit, take sleep when you can get it--when she came back out, hair wet on her neck and cheeks. She came over to Alex's bed and stood over her, just stood, looking.

"Something on my face?"

"You do exactly as I say," Nikita said. "Exactly. Disobey once and we're gone."

Alex sat up fast. "You won't regret this."

"I already do."

"Can I wear the red, if you don't like it?"

"No."

Alex ended up in the grey--in the light it had a faint pattern on it that wasn't quite gauche enough to be snakeskin--and tall boots she still remembered how to walk in without any trouble, but she wasn't going to think about things like that tonight, no.

The bar they went to was called Brass Knockers, and Nikita's contact looked at them for exactly two seconds before she said, "Cousins, eh?" and Alex thought, ohhhhh.

She stepped in closer to Nikita, put her hand on the small of Nikita's back, and gave Andrea Perotto an embarrassed sort of smile. This was a role she knew how to play, at least. Nikita leaned into her with only a second's pause.

And later, when everything, of course, went to shit, and they staggered back to the safehouse in the small hours with Andrea Perotto's scalpel still sticking out of Nikita's purse, hair fallen into limp disarray, leaning against each other with that shocky laughter and fizzing energy from risking death, and Nikita dragged the red dress up over her head and thanked her for recommending it, Alex looked at Nikita, and looked at her own perfectly steady hands, and thought, this was a role she could lose herself in.


End file.
